Joshua Scott Crisp: Perdue's anti-alcohol view based on biased study

Posted: Friday, April 04, 2008

Gov. Sonny Perdue's assertion in his March 28 Banner-Herald column - that our state should maintain its archaic position in not allowing alcohol sales in grocery, convenience and package stores on Sunday for safety reasons - is an assault on logic, and should be taken as an insult to the intelligence of every Georgia citizen.

No one in this state is naive enough to believe that those prohibitions of Sunday alcohol sales exist for the safety of the people. If that were the case, alcohol would be illegal every day. No, Gov. Perdue is being led by his own ideology, and clearly has no problem playing fast and loose with the facts to force his beliefs on us.

His chief source for his stance against Sunday alcohol sales is a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has been criticized for a bias toward studies showing the negative effects of alcohol. Our governor is pushing prohibitionist propaganda. He even inadvertently admitted as much when he quoted the final sentence of the study, which reads, "State legislators should consider (the) consequences (of Sunday alcohol sales) when deciding on a policy that is intended to serve the public well-being."

What purely statistical, non-biased study closes with a statement like that?